“As of May 2017, this seems to be a new unofficial world record for the longest distance driven in a single charge for an Opel Ampera-e/Chevrolet Bolt EV. I did it in Hvide Sande, Denmark. Average consumption was 92 Wh/km. The speedometer showed 42 km/h. But the real speed was 39-40 km/h.”

Now we’re eager to see the first Chevy Bolt or Opel Ampera-E to crack past the 400-mile mark on a single charge. Surely it can be done…if not already.

Videos (below): Some long-version follow-ups by Bjorn on his Opel Ampera-E adventures. If you have some extra time, why not check out an extended cut of his trip (first video), while the second video is some preparation work for the trip. Enjoy! (Hat tip to Jeff N in the comments), the third is the Bjorn’s return ans some fast charging.

Bonus Video (below): Just today Bjorn has added a (more compact) video detailing some of the Ampera-E/Bolt EV’s driver features.

“I show how the regen settings work, how awesome the one pedal driving is, how poor the turn radius is and show some of the nice safety features about this car.”

I think the video shows he still had 15-20 km of remaining range so the car probably would have kept going a bit longer.

Note that he drove about half of this at night with the non-LED headlights on at 12C or about 54F. If this had been driven during the day at warmer temperatures (where the battery is able to release more energy) he likely would have gone over 400 miles.

If the HID lamps are 55 watts each, that’s 110 watts/hour while they’re on. If he drove overnight for 8 hours, that’s basically 0.9 kWh of energy sucked up by the HIDs, or nearly 9 km worth of range, since he was averaging 9.2 Wh/mile. That’s not just noise.

You meant 9.2 Wh/mile as lights only? You wrote “since he was averaging 9.2 Wh/mile” which made it sound like the entire car averaged 9.2 Wh/mile.

Rather than distance, power is more relevant. For SparkEV, 25 MPH would use about 3 kW, and lights are about 150W. Taking inverter into account, total power for lights (plus radio; must have radio) might be 200W. That’s about 8% of total.

If Bolt lights are only 70W (100W after inverter), and Bolt use more power at 25 MPH due to being heavier and wider tires (rolling resistance), lights would be much smaller fraction.

Li-Ions don’t warm up much at all during slow discharges. If that battery warmed up, it was because the car used energy from the pack to run a heater. And that heater would have to fight the constant flow of 12C air going across the bottom of the car trying to cool it back down.

Note: his problems setting up Android Auto may be due to regional use restrictions imposed by Google. A commenter on Bjorn’s YouTube site said they worked around a similar problem in that area by using a VPN to appear as if they were in the US when installing Android Auto and it then continued working without the VPN enabled.

Tony Williams (of quickchargepower.com) used to do it for various EV at 62 MPH (100 kph). Not sure if he’ll do it for Bolt. While 100 mile-ish EV would take an hour or two, Bolt could take 4 to 6 hours. Saddle sore could be a real issue.

Ah hah, but there’s the rub with EVs. What do you do if you are truly empty of charge? You can’t have someone just bring you a gallon of gas, or even keep a gallon on hand just for the experiment. This is going to be a major problem once we have many EVs on the road.

It will be LESS of a problem once more ev’s on the road become more common place. Right now, tow trucks may have a gallon of gasoline, or a spare 12 volt start battery, but don’t have any 120 volts ac to get you 2 miles of charge to the nearest public charger.

If the tow truck has a 120 volt power take-off, or else a brute force 2 kw gas generator to recharge batteries, – you’ll more likely find that complement of equipment the more call there is for it.

The most nerve-wracking times I experienced was when I was driving my tesla roadster, but did not have my 110 volt cord in the trunk for whatever reason. Since the connector was very non-standard, the only option was flat-bedding it all the way home.

It’s really not that hard to handle this. If it becomes a common problem and DCFC capability is common, then there will just be trucks that can come out with a 5kWh pack and charge your car with it at DC rates (25kWish). They could put 15 miles into your car in 12 minutes, less time than it would take to hook up a car on a flatbed and take it to a gas station (usually). Then you just drive to a nearby DCFC and fill the rest of the way up.

His experience with the seats is similar to mine. The issue isn’t the seat bottom is impossible uncomfortable, the issue is the seat back is difficult (or perhaps impossible for some) to adjust correctly because it doesn’t have many adjustments.

I think if it had been warmer he would have gone even further. It is clear the car was doing better when it was warmer. I find that my car does far better at 70F than 40F. If you assume 55F is the optimal range I would expect the two to be about equal, but it’s not even close. It really seems to like warm weather, even though I end up using A/C.

Interesting point about the 55W headlights. I’m rather annoyed GM put the lowest-tech headlights possible on their high tech Bolt. My Leaf had LED headlights.

I watched. The issue was the charger in question had no connectivity. It wasn’t working properly, it only worked with a card. And he didn’t have a card, he has presumably expected to use an app or something. An app or a phone call wouldn’t work as the system couldn’t contact the charger.

Wow, you can turn the car on while DCFCing and see the charge rate? I never tried! Whoops.

His estimate of where the car dropped down is a little low. The car had around 60% at that point, but if you watch, it actually jumps to 65% (the bars are 5% increments) as he’s pointing to it, so it was closer to 65% when it slowed than to 60%. I know from this weekend I watched the utility meter on a charger as it charged and I know it was still doing full speed (51.565kW “at the wall”, meaning probably 45/46kW delivered) at 61% (indicated on charger). But I unplugged at that point, for all I know it drops down at 62%. In fact past experience indicates it drops at some point before 65%.

Dropping from 45kWh to 39kWh is as shown is not a huge deal. Each percent is only 45 seconds of charging at 45kWh. If it drops at 62% instead of 75% it only means it drops 8 minutes early, meaning you charge 1kWh (total) less during those 8 minutes than if it hadn’t dropped. That means an extra 80 seconds on the charger. Huh, well maybe 80 seconds is a big deal now that I think about it.

Anyway, the bigger issue to me is that past about 80% the charge rate gets very low. By 90% (er, 18 bars, not sure if it was a bit past 90%) it seemed barely faster than AC charging.

The steering wheel on the Ampera-e has a cruise control on/off button. In theUS there is no such button, the cruise is always armed, you just set it or cancel it. This button on the Ampera-e replaces the button on the Bolt wheel which turns the lane keep assist on and off. The lane keep assist on/off thus moves to the center stack as he shows. The two buttons next to the lane keep assist on/off in the center stack are blank in the Bolt. You cannot turn the parking sensors on/off with a single click in the US. The Bolt also lacks the button he shows which would seem to activate the backup/front cameras. The Bolt has no way to rapidly access these other than shifting into reverse. This is lame and I’ve complained before. It takes 3 clicks to turn the camera on for nose-in parking on the Bolt.

The Bolt doesn’t have rear heated seats. The Bolt does however have a false floor in the back (on all models I think, Premiers at least) which is not present in this car. The Bolt cannot read speed limit signs and display the limit on the dash. The Bolt does not (yet) have pedestrian alert noise, so there is no button on screen to turn it on/off.

He doesn’t know what location-based charging is, but it means that the car knows when you are home versus other places. So you can set charge limits and charge timers for home that don’t apply elsewhere. This is great so you can set your charge to only charge at night at home but when using chargers on the go it’ll charge immediately.

I have no idea what he is complaining about with the rear seat height. If you want your thighs on the seat you move your feet forward as he did. You have to do this in a Model S also, in fact the seating positions front and back are far more stretched out in the Model S. As the Bolt has plenty of legroom in back for you to move your feet forward (as he did) I don’t know what he’s complaining about.

The interior floor in the car is higher than cars with no battery below the floor. However, I believe the floor is the same height as on the Model S. And I know (I measured it) that the floor in the Bolt is almost 2 inches lower than in an i3. This despite the fact that the ground clearance in the Bolt is almost an inch more than an i3. So the Bolt has about a 2.5″ less thick battery pack than an i3 despite having 2x the pack capacity!

There is no 12V socket in the back of the car in the Bolt either. I didn’t find this odd. My LEAF didn’t have one either.

The Ampera e appears to have front parking sensors. I don’t think the Bolt has them. Or perhaps they just don’t beep I don’t think Bolt parking sensors beep at all, they just show on the dash. I never use them anyway, I use the top-down camera to gauge my position in a parking spot.

I’ve never driven in sport mode on the Bolt. I guess I’ll have to try it. It accelerates well even in normal mode.

Bolt Premier comes standard with heated rear seats. And there is a cruise-control off/on button on the steering wheel. Location is on the left side of the steering wheel, it’s the “east” or right button of the 5-button cluster there.

Hmm. I guess I got wrong which button changed then. What is the button right button in the left “wing” of the steering wheel controls?

On the Bolt it is the lane assist on/off. On the Ampera e that is in the center console and some button that looks like it has a speedometer on it is there instead. What is that button? I tried to find the Ampera e manual and couldn’t find it online (lots of fake sites though).

To the left of that cluster there are 2 buttons right next to the center of the steering wheel. On the Premier, the top button is the Heated Steering Wheel, and the bottom button is the Lane Keep Assist on/off.

The Bolt’s rear parking sensors do beep, and you do get a display in the DIC indicating how close you are to an object. However, the beeps are not loud enough in my opinion.

And I too wish that you could activate the front camera view a lot quicker, like with a button on the dash, or to have it automatically come on when you drop below a certain speed. I seem to recall that Toyota’s 360 degree camera system automatically activates in certain situations.

Could GM come out with a 40kWh Bolt to improve sales? A Bolt with 150 mile range that sold under $30k would be very competitive with Ford, VW, and BMW for instance. The Bolt seems “over-battered” for its economy car shell.